Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Tomato Cliffhanger

Resplendent in late evening sun

Bit ashamed to admit this (I'm among friends here, right?), but I fear we've gotten dangerously close to knackering up our tomato plants. It's ferociously hot in the polytunnel when the sun comes out and having not been down to water them since Saturday, they were seriously parched by the time we got down tonight.

I quickly dug holes in the ground for 6 of them, gave them a bit of a pruning, and then a massive soak with added seaweed extract. The plan was to put the other 6 on top of growbags and see what does better. This needs done now as a matter of urgency. Some of the growbag-destined plants were looking particularly sorry for themselves.

I just about caught myself apologising to them as I drenched the roots. I'm hoping that at least most of these plants will bounce back and do ok, but it feels like we've committed a cardinal sin by letting them get so dry. Ho hum.

Much better news elsewhere, as many of our crops continue to come along nicely:

Broad beans

The broad beans are really putting on a growth spurt, looking very healthy all the while. A few tiny beans have begun to form:

Micro bean

Peas

The Peas we sowed a few weeks back are coming along fine too, as are the beetroot that we transplanted from seed modules to terra firma around the same time:

Beetroot

Wanting to finish the evening on a high, especially after the tomatoey screw-up, I thougjht I'd check on our Rocket first early spuds. They're still in full flower, so it's probably considered too soon to be pulling any up, but sod it, I thought, and here's what we ended up with:

Not bad at all for one, not properly matured, plant. Always something perfectly, timelessly magic about the first spuds of the year.

We had them for dinner, about 30 minutes after they came out the ground. I thought they tasted amazing and had a perfect, uber-waxy texture. They went with some creamed home-grown leeks, which despite all having gone to seed and thus having a solid central shaft still tasted great, and a salad of home grown sorrel, radishes and chard. A perfect summer supper. Sorry, no pics, it didn't hang around long enough.

Talking of sorrel, we've hardly touched our patch of it this year, meaning it has gone all massive and to seed. Here's Kasia wrestling with it tonight:

I read somewhere recently that sorrel has large amounts of some kind of acid in it that can crystalise and form kidney stones, which probably put me off it. It was nice to have its assertive tartness back on the plate.

So, our first dinner of (nearly) all home-grown stuff this year, good times. Come back for next week's exciting installment to see if those tomatoes can bounce back!

Your allotment neighbour here! If you ever need us to nip over and water your tomatoes then just give us a shout - been trying to get down at least every other day to water ours (and rip out a few thistles while we're at it...).

Hey Andy, cheers for that! I might just catch your number next time I see you down there. Ps, you guys have done an awesome job on your plot, is this your first allotment or have you been at this type of thing before?

Cheers! We're complete novices, just lucky to have plenty of spare time at the moment to devote to ripping out weeds (the joys of being a 'self-employed' musician...!). See you down there soon no doubt.